Domestic carrier Akasa Air has commenced its flight services to the newly-launched Noida International Airport with its inaugural flight QP2017 departing from Navi Mumbai International Airport on Tuesday morning, linking the Mumbai metropolitan region with Delhi-NCR.
Akasa Air flight departed from Navi Mumbai at 7.30 am while the return flight arrived at NMIA at 12.30 pm, a Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd (NMIAL) spokesperson said.
The airline will operate seven flights a week to the greenfield airport.
Commercial flight services at the Noida International Airport commenced on Monday, after a 21-month delay. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the greenfield airport in the Gautambuddha Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh in November 2021. The facility was inaugurated by PM Modi on March 28 this year.
The airport received its first landing on Monday when an IndiGo flight from Lucknow' Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport landed, after which it commenced its journey to Bengaluru.
The event was shortly followed by the first takeoff from the greenfield project by a flight to Lucknow. The plane carried around 170 farmers, including women from the Jewar region whose land was acquired by the state government for the first phase development of the airport.
By linking Navi Mumbai's emerging aviation and commercial ecosystem with Noida's fast-growing industrial and business corridor, the service is expected to support greater movement of entrepreneurs, professionals, investors and travellers between western India and northern India, the NMIAL spokesperson said.
The Adani Group-owned Navi Mumbai Intrenational Airport, which is a greenfield facility and started commercial flights in December last year, handles around 20,000 passengers per day with 150 departures and arrivals. The airport is expecting the daily passenger footfall to surge to 50,000 per day by the year-end, and 380 Air traffic movements (arrivals and departures) per day.
Navi Mumbai International Airport on June 15 was named among the Prix Versailles World's Most Beautiful Airports 2026 alongside five other international airports including Guangzhou, China; Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Kandal Stueng, Cambodia; Pittsburgh, United States; and San Diego, United States.
